Hosni Mubarak stepped down after 30 years of Power

I have been following Egypt with excitement these days, like so many of us. It is wonderful to feel the excitement and energy that is in the air. Democracy Now! and Facebook have been my favorite sources of information. Movement is movement is movement :-)

what do we do with paradise? - the story of stuff

just watch the 20-minute video, it will speak for itself...



if the video should be unavailable by now, you can try the original website, where you can also see it with subtitles in many majority languages
http://www.storyofstuff.com/international/index.html

Daniela Swarowsky & Samuli Schielke - Messages from Paradise

a trailer for the first part of a trilogy about migration - the longing for paradise in ... Europe & "The West" more information at http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=WlIjE1HsiPo

COBRA

Recently I reviewed untitled/. {COBRA voor bij de koffie} (COBRA for the coffie-table) a conceptual piece that I started in 2003 (for more info, click here)

It's main and central element is that of play. I wanted to create an experience of spontaneous and creative people at play, in whatever way their inspiration takes them. How could this be made possible? How would it be a healthy balance between construction and destruction, and how to make sure that it remains a collaborative effort, where every one gets a maximum range of expressing and action?

I realise these days that is was also a pre-lude and a preparation that lead me to »les enfants du paradis« A successful realisation of COBRA is a state of Paradise, and that this is something I want, as an individual, also as a creator and an artist.

When I re-read the statements of those artists that created the original CoBrA art-movement in 1948, many of them are at the heart of what I think is possible now, it only takes a more thorough and wide-spread change of mind from insight, not force.

That yes, we can live in paradise, all that was originally needed was there. This is in sharp contrast to the state of the planet's human population today (as of 2007) Too many of us live in poverty and terribly hostile life-conditions, without having chosen to do so, which is completely unnecessary and could very easily be helped.
(see for example the section did-you-know? at www.whiteband.org)

first video of 2006 performance in tüzraktér: walking con.sens.us

performed with members of the audience, somewhere in the middle of the evening. this was the first large-scale performance of the score. all was filmed in near darkness - due to post-processing it is now possible to see more, even though the quality is still very grainy...

more celebration: Dimitri From Paris @ The Mansion, Mexico City

this is a bootleg video of Dimitri from Paris as he is playing Outwork feat. Mr. Gee's "Elektro" (Joey Negro Remix) at The Mansion in Mexico City.

i find the combination of repetitive hard and syncopated rhythms and spheric chords / organs very attractive. something i would like for a new realization of 'les enfants du paradis' - somewhere in the second half of the evening, approaching trances... liberation of physicality from ordinary restraints. (the question for me is always: what then? and what about the equally liberated aggression, when the physical energy is still meeting obstacles through remaining, yet unresolved energetic blocks?)

another look on celebration

click here to read an article on celebration and carnival by Barbara Ehrenreich titled "Reclaiming What Makes Us Human" and published online at In These Times.

thanks to Daniela Swarowsky for this tip!
(her friend Samuli Schielke does research on popular Egyptian Sufi celebrations of Mawlids which I understand are not received very favorably by the Salafi Egyptian elites either ... for a gallery of his photos please click here)